Victory Congregations:
Voicing the Sacred Trust Covenant in Climate Defense
Earth Sunday Address
United First Methodist Church
May 3, 2009, Eugene, Oregon
Mary Christina Wood1
Philip H. Knight Professor
University of Oregon School of Law
It is truly an honor to participate in your Earth Sunday. Your congregation is
already doing so much to focus on environmental responsibility as part of your
relationship with the Earth, with God’s Creation. I am here because our society needs to
go so much farther than perhaps we can even imagine, to save our planet. We need to go
passionately farther, with the same love that emboldens parents who are fighting for their
child’s life. I am here because I think that you, both as a congregation and as individuals,
are the catalysts for the passion our society urgently needs.
We live together during a sacred time on Earth. What is sacred is not just God’s
Creation -- all of the birds, the animals, the rivers, the trees, the flowers – but also this
fleeting moment of time we share together on Earth, a time in which just about all of the
gifts of Creation are imperiled through our own pollution and excesses. Just from the
mere coincidence that we happen to be alive together at this time, we share a spiritual
calling that perhaps no other generation of Humanity has known – to protect Creation
1
Mary Christina Wood, Philip H. Knight Professor of Law, University of Oregon School of Law,
Founding Director, Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. Professor Wood is co-authoring
(with Heather Brinton) a book entitled, The Dawn of Planetary Patriotism: A Citizens Call to Climate
Defense, and has another book-in-progress, Nature’s Trust: A Paradigm for Natural Resource Stewardship
(Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2010). This speech is available for downloading at
http://www.law.uoregon.edu/faculty/mwood/speech.php. Other materials on climate crisis and victory
speakers are available at http://www.law.uoregon.edu/faculty/mwood/citizens.php.
1
from unimaginable, and irrevocable, destruction of our own making. If you come to a
river and you see a young child fall into the swirling waters below, and you look around
and no one else is there to rescue him, you know at that moment what your calling is –
and you do what it takes to save that young and precious life. I am asking you today to
find your calling for all of the children of this world, because their Earth -- their future -is like that of a drowning child.
I will start by addressing the urgency of today. Then I will turn to the matter of
responsibility for addressing carbon pollution, on both the governmental level and the
individual level. After that I will turn to how people can passionately mobilize this
society into action, and how individuals and families can reconstruct their daily lives and
family enterprises to live gently in this new world we face.
I.
At the Precipice
Most of you have read quite a bit on climate crisis. I would consider you a very
well informed community. But let me ask, how many of you wake up in the middle of
the night, worried about global warming and its effect on your children’s or
grandchildren’s future? If you still sleep well through the night, I would say you
probably don’t know how bad the situation is. We’re dealing with a mind-blowing
urgency where, literally, every day counts.
In June 2007, leading climate scientists issued a report concluding that the Earth
is in “imminent peril”—literally on the verge of runaway climate heating that would
impose catastrophic conditions on generations to come.2 Climate change is leagues
James Hansen et al., Climate Change and Trace Gases, 365 PHIL. TRANSACTIONS ROYAL SOC’Y A:
MATHEMATICAL, PHYSICAL AND ENGINEERING SCIENCES 1925, 1949 (2007), available at
http://www.planetwork.net/climate/Hansen2007.pdf; see also Steve Connor, The Earth Today Stands in
Imminent
Peril,
THE
INDEPENDENT,
June
19,
2007,
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2675747.ece (last visited Jan. 8, 2009).
2
2
beyond what our civilization has ever faced. It threatens to destroy our planet’s major
fixtures, including the polar ice sheets, Greenland, the coral reefs and the Amazon forest.
If unchecked, it will cause rising sea levels and inundation of coastal areas worldwide. It
will trigger the kind of mass extinction that has not occurred on Earth for 55 million
years. In the words of a leading scientist, our continued carbon pollution will cause a
“transformed planet.”3
The implications for Humanity, and our children, are dreadful, and I think it does
no one any good to sugar-coat the situation. If this scenario comes to pass, it could mean
death for millions or even billions of Earth’s citizens. The nation’s leading climate
scientist has said that global warming threatens "[n]ot simply the Earth, but the fate of all
its species, including humanity.”4 The Mayor of New York City has said: “Global
warming in the long-term has the potential to kill everybody.”5 Just days ago, Hillary
Clinton told international leaders, “No issue we face today has broader long-term
consequences or greater potential to alter the world for future generations.”6 This is no
time for cowardice, or denial, or distraction. This is something that we have to face head
on with all of the courage we can muster.
The insidious thing about climate crisis is that, if we just keep on doing tomorrow
what we did today, we will send the world over the edge. Humans emit 70 million tons
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a day, and emissions are rising by 2-3% a year.
James Speth, the Dean of the Yale School of Forestry, has just written a book, THE
BRIDGE AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, in which he concludes that, if we continue Business
3
Jim Hansen, The Threat to the Planet, N.Y. REV., July 13, 2006, at 12.
Jim Hansen, Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth 1 (2009), available at
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081121_Obama.pdf.
5
Benny Avni, Mayor Compares Threat of Global Warming to Terrorism, THE SUN (Feb. 12, 2008),
available at http://www.nysun.com/national/mayor-compares-threat-of-global-warming/71103/.
6
Clinton Says U.S. No Longer AWOL on Climate Change, CNN Politics.com (April 27, 2009).
4
3
as Usual, “the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in.”7 That’s four
decades from now. I wake up in the middle of the night – on most nights -- haunted by
the knowledge that people across this country will do tomorrow exactly what they did
yesterday. I’m a mother of three young boys. Every time I look at my children, I think
about the urgency of climate crisis. I couldn’t look them in the eyes unless I knew in my
heart that I was doing everything possible, in every way I know how, to secure a future
for them by fighting carbon pollution.
We are amidst a planetary emergency, and yet few people know it. They hear the
politicians talk about reducing carbon by 2050. But we won’t have a 2050 that is
recognizable to us unless we take serious action to reduce carbon this year, and next year.
The head of the UN climate panel said in 2007, “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s
too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the
defining moment.”8 Let me explain why.
We are rapidly slipping towards a climate tripwire -- a point of no return that
climate scientists call the tipping point.9 At such point, our enormous carbon pollution
could kick in positive feedbacks in Nature that are capable of unraveling the planet’s
climate system, causing runaway heating despite any subsequent carbon reductions
achieved by Humanity. Scientists have identified several dangerous feedbacks. One is
the albedo flip. When ice melts and turns to water, it causes further heating, because
7
See JAMES GUSTAVE SPETH, THE BRIDGE AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD: CAPITALISM, THE
ENVIRONMENT, AND CROSSING FROM CRISIS TO SUSTAINABILITY x (2008); see also Mark Lynas, Why We
Must Ration the Future, NEW STATESMAN (Oct. 23, 2006), at http://www.newstatesman.com/200610230015
(last visited Jan. 8, 2009) (“[I]f we go on emitting greenhouse gases at anything like the current rate, most of
the surface of the globe will be rendered uninhabitable within the lifetimes of most readers of this article.”).
8
Elizabeth Rosenthal, UN Report Describes Risks of Inaction on Climate Change, NEW YORK TIMES
(Nov. 17, 2007) (quoting Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
9
For general explanation, see Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Research Finds that Earth’s Climate
is
Approaching
‘Dangerous’
Point
(May
30,
2007),
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/danger_point.html. See also Fred Pearce, WITH
SPEED AND VIOLENCE: WHY SCIENTISTS FEAR TIPPING POINTS IN CLIMATE CHANGE 238–39 (2007).
4
water absorbs heat, and ice reflects heat.10 So, melting begets more melting. Just two
years ago scientists made a stunning prediction that the Arctic might be free of summer
ice by 2040. Within a year they revised that date to 2012 because the ice sheets were
collapsing so fast.11 Another feedback is the failure of Earth’s natural sinks to absorb
more carbon to compensate for our pollution. The Amazon rainforest – the lungs of the
planet -- is drying and burning, now releasing more carbon that its remaining vegetation
can absorb. The oceans are becoming saturated with carbon. They are becoming so
acidic in some places that shellfish can’t survive – the acid erodes their shells. Dead
zones now cover tens of thousands of square miles of ocean. Another feedback results
from vast expanses of permafrost melting in Siberia and Alaska, which has the capacity
to release enormous amounts of carbon and methane – a scenario described by one
science writer as an “atmospheric tsunami.”12
These feedbacks all lead us closer to a precipice.13 Even two years ago it was
thought that we might have 8-10 years left before the climate tipping point, but more
recent data shows that we are on its doorstep now. We’ve reached the limit of what
Nature can take. As NASA scientist Jim Hansen said a year ago, “We are now on the
hairy edge.”
Scientists are trying to explain this to the public by making an analogy to a
bathtub. There’s a drain on the bathtub, but if you put more water in than can drain out,
you will overflow the bathtub. Our sinks -- the oceans and forests -- are the drains to the
atmospheric bathtub. We have to slash our carbon emissions urgently, today and
10
11
See Steve Connor, The Earth Today Stands in Imminent Peril, THE INDEPENDENT (June 22, 2007).
Seth Borenstein, Artic Sea Ice Gone in Summer within Five Years? ASSOCIATED PRESS (Dec. 12,
2007).
12
13
Pearce, supra note 9, at 78.
Id. at xxiv.
5
tomorrow and the next day and every day thereafter, in order to bring the emissions down
to what Nature will absorb – to what can drain from the bathtub. And if we fail, we flood
the atmosphere with so much carbon that it will cause runaway heating, which Humanity
and civilization cannot survive. So this is isn’t about what we can do by 2050. It’s about
what we do now. That is why I say, we are in a spiritual time. We are on that riverbank,
and the child is flailing in the swirling water. It’s your child. It’s my child. If you see
that child, you hear your calling.
There is hope. Many scientists still believe that bold action on a massive
planetary scale can avert the worst of the catastrophe. And we have the human
imagination, the resources, the legal tools, and the bureaucracy to tackle this challenge
head-on. We always have. But because carbon pollution is an all-encompassing global
crisis, it has defied the civic understanding of most citizens. No one is holding anyone
else responsible. When human beings can’t figure out who has responsibility to solve a
problem, it usually doesn’t get solved.
Citizens have not even begun to hold their government responsible. Government
has done next to nothing to address this emergency. In view of the consequences of
runaway heating, governments that continue to ignore climate crisis might as well cast a
future death sentence over their citizens. Yet citizens in this country approach the
climate threat in much the same way they do any other problem—viewing it as a political
issue that government may (or may not) choose to address. Citizens find it normal to
have to go lobby government for their own survival. And we lack a sense of
responsibility on the individual level as well, which may explain why some people are
dramatically changing their personal lifestyles to slash carbon emissions, while others are
mindlessly enlarging their carbon footprint.
6
The lack of any framework to assign responsibility is the most profound, and
insidious, threat facing us, yet one well within our capacity to address. If this mental
blind spot can be filled with clear understandings shared by citizens across this country,
powerful notions of civic responsibility will unleash the momentum needed to mobilize
and rebuild society in a sustainable, carbon-free manner. This is an altar call to religious
communities. As Reverend Sally Bingham says, “I believe that People of Faith cannot
stand by and let Creation be destroyed. We have a responsibility to protect it.”14
II.
Nature’s Trust and the Living Covenant
My own work at the law school focuses on a framework of climate responsibility.
The bedrock principle of this framework is that government is trustee of our natural
assets, including the waters, wildlife, and air. This is legal tenet dating back to time
immemorial. A trust is a fundamental type of ownership whereby one manages property
for the benefit of another – similar to you managing a college account for your niece. We
citizens all hold a common property interest in what I call Nature’s Trust.15 We, along
with future generations, are the rightful beneficiaries of this natural Endowment, and we
need our trust to be productive in order to sustain human survival. Our imperiled
atmosphere is the most crucial asset in our trust.
With every trust, there is a core duty of protection. The trustee must defend the
trust against injury. This obligation to protect Nature’s Trust lies at the very heart of
government’s purpose. Engrained in the mantle of government that citizens confer upon
representatives and officials is an obligation to act as prudent trustees safeguarding this
Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, LOVE GOD, HEAL EARTH viii (2009).
Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519 (1896) (“The power . . . resulting from this common ownership is
to be exercised, like all other powers of government, as a trust for the benefit of the people, and not as a
prerogative for the benefit of private individuals as distinguished from the public good.”). For discussion of
the Nature’s Trust paradigm as it applies to environmental law, see Mary Christina Wood, Nature’s Trust:
Reclaiming
An
Environmental
Discourse,
25
VIRGINIA
L.
J.
431
(2007),
http://www.law.uoregon.edu/faculty/mwood/docs/ntreclaiming.pdf.
14
15
7
natural inheritance. When we call upon our government to defend our atmosphere, we
are calling forth principles that have been said to “exist from the inception of
humankind.”16 In this country, Nature’s Trust principles were penned by judges long
ago as the first environmental law of this nation.17
We must quickly reframe what is currently government’s discretion to destroy our
atmosphere, into an obligation to defend our atmosphere. As a sign at a recent climate
rally said, “Survival is non-negotiable.” Under this trust frame, all government agencies
at every level – local, state, and federal – have a strict fiduciary responsibility to protect
the atmosphere, as one of the assets in Nature’s Trust. Moreover, there is a standard of
care against which to evaluate government action. You see, we don’t just vest trustees
with control over priceless assets and have no measure of their performance.
Government trustees must protect the atmospheric trust according to prescriptions set by
scientists, rather than arbitrary political targets. If our pollution exceeds the capacity in
that bathtub drain, it doesn’t matter much that we tried hard – we still face catastrophe.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has called for arresting the growth of
greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, then bringing levels down 4% a year.18 As a longterm target, industrial society should be carbon-free, or close to it, by 2050. The most
important target of all is the near-term one – arresting the growth of emissions by 2010 –
because only the near-term goals keep us on the safe side of the Earth’s tipping point.
This obligation to reduce carbon flows to every level of government. Let me
16
Oposa v. Factoran, G.R. No. 101083 (July 30, 1993) (Supreme Court of the Philippines), excerpted
in JAN G. LAITOS, SANDRA B. ZELLMER, MARY C. WOOD, & DAN H. COLE, NATURAL RESOURCES LAW,
Ch. 8.II, at 441–44 (West Publishing 2006).
17
See Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387, 393 (1892). The body of law known as the
“public trust doctrine” is compiled and analyzed in LAITOS, ZELLMER, WOOD, & COLE, NATURAL RESOURCES
LAW, supra note 12, at ch. 8.II.
18
AMY L. LUERS ET AL., UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS, HOW TO AVOID DANGEROUS CLIMATE
CHANGE:
A
TARGET
FOR
U.S.
EMISSIONS
REDUCTIONS
3
(2007),
available
at
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/emissions-target-report.pdf.
8
explain why. The sovereign nations of Earth share the atmosphere as their common
property on behalf of their beneficiaries, the citizens. Governments are sovereign cotenant trustees of the atmosphere, all bound by the same duties that organize, for
example, the relationship of family members who own a cabin together as co-tenants.
Property law has always imposed a responsibility on co-tenants to not degrade, or waste,
their common asset.
Let’s think about the industrialized world’s carbon pollution as one big “pie in the
sky.” Even though industrialized nations come in different sizes, if each reduces carbon
proportionately by the same amount, the carbon pie as a whole will reduce by that
amount. But the contrary is also true: if any one major polluter does not accept its share
of carbon reduction, it will leave an orphan share that will sink all other planetary efforts.
An orphan share is simply a share of responsibility that is abdicated. If there are orphan
shares, the carbon pie will not shrink by the amount it needs to. The United States emits
30% of the carbon pollution on the planet. No nation on earth is positioned, much less
obligated, to adopt an orphan share left by a deadbeat sovereign – especially a share as
large as ours. Scaling down to another level, this also means that all states, cities, and
counties must carry their burden. In order to save this planet, we must not excuse any
orphan shares.
Last year I gave a talk to a class of high school students in McCall, Idaho.
McCall is a small mountain town of just 3,000 residents. These high school students had
studied global warming, and they were already very worried about their futures. I told
them, “The fate of the entire planet rests on you people in McCall, Idaho, because if you
don’t take your share of carbon reduction, who will? Do you expect those of us in
Eugene, Oregon to take it? We have enough of a challenge with our own share. And
9
unless every share is accounted for, we’re not going to decrease the carbon pie enough in
the time we have left.” That point hit home with those students. There was a sober
moment when they realized that their future depends on their town accepting carbon
responsibility – and on everyone else in the world thinking the same way.
When we realize that cities and states and nations are made up of individuals –
people just like us – we see that this orphan share concept translates into our own
personal responsibility for the Earth. Each of us has a personal responsibility to care for
the Creation that God entrusted to us, as one generation, to pass down to the next
generation of his children. When we live, we hold part of a sacred estate called Earth. It
is comprised of the natural assets that we need to survive. The Earth Endowment is a
trust. We are only the present beneficiaries of the trust. The trust contains the
inheritance that we hold for our beloved children.
We assume that when a person has a child, no one has to tell that person, “This
child is now your responsibility.” We just know it is so. And everything around us in
society tells us it is so and reinforces our parenting inclinations. We should think of the
Earth in the same way. No one should need to tell us to love her, care for her, protect her.
It is our sacred responsibility as part of the living generation drawing from all of
Creation. But for our living generation, this responsibility is greatly heightened, because
the Earth is in peril, and with it, our children.
Yet we individuals are hiding as faceless creatures behind the veil of society.
We’re all a part of this problem. We all generate carbon pollution. Yet, no one is asking
us how much we drive, whether we waste materials, whether we consume and consume
and consume well beyond what we need. Gandhi said, “Live simply so that others may
simply live.” When we live too far beyond our most essential needs, whether
10
intentionally, carelessly, or mindlessly, we leave an orphan share of responsibility that
presents a moral hazard for life on Earth. We have orphaned our responsibility to care
for the trust that was divinely bequeathed to us as we took our first breath in life and is in
our care until we take our last breath. Rev. Fred Small has written: “Every religious
tradition teaches awe of creation, yet we desecrate it. Every religious tradition teaches
temperance in sensation and material things, yet we pursue them addictively, vainly
hoping to fill our spiritual emptiness. Every religious tradition forbids theft, yet every
day we live unsustainably we steal from our children and our children’s children.”19
So now, we find ourselves treading into a moral realm, because our actions hold
lethal consequences for our own children and for generations after them. And yet a lot of
people dealing with climate advise: “Don’t be judgmental. People don’t like being told
that they should change their lifestyles.” On one level, I can really appreciate and respect
that. But I also think we are engaged with moral questions every day as we take actions
that destroy the planet for our children, and their children. We love our children, after all.
Can we really ignore this issue?
Barbara Kingsolver speaks of “the anguish of standing behind a child, looking
with her at the road ahead. . . .”20 She writes, “The truth is so horrific: we are marching
ourselves to the maw of our own extinction.”21 In the end, the destiny of our own
children does come down to actions taken by each one of us individually, and all of us
collectively. Should we just turn away from it and continue driving SUVs and drinking
bottled water and consuming endlessly without thought? Should we just leave others to
Rev. Fred Small, The Greater Sacrifice, LOVE GOD, HEAL EARTH 15 (2009).
BARBARA KINGSOLVER, ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE 346 (2007).
21
Id. at 345.
19
20
11
solve the problem of climate crisis when we know it can’t be solved without everyone’s
participation?
Kingsolver says: “I do know the answer to that one: that’s called child abuse.
When my teenager worries that her generation won’t be able to fix this problem, I have to
admit to her that it won’t be up to her generation. It’s up to mine. This is a now-or-never
kind of project.”22
And she’s right. We’re at the tipping point. It’s up to us. I think it does people a
disservice to not embrace those moral questions, because after all, most human beings do
want to be good people, and we all need to believe in our hearts that we are good people.
If we turned away from that drowning child, we would face the worst indictment and
punishment in our own souls. We are at a point now where scientists are clearly telling
us that, if we don’t change our lifestyles and consumption urgently and dramatically, our
world won’t be habitable for our children within their life spans.
We really can’t solve this problem without entering the moral terrain.
Government cannot control all carbon pollution in our daily lives – and we wouldn’t want
it to. And yet, there is no moral compass to orient citizens in defining their own personal
responsibility in this crisis. The social norm prevailing today conveys a volunteer-like
approach to carbon reduction -- it’s great that some people do it, but the rest of us don’t
have to bother ourselves with it. The huge scope of carbon pollution provides a shield
behind which we can all rationalize our individual carbon emissions. We bear witness to
this when we see a hummer roaring past a commuter bicyclist. The bicyclist may feel
demoralized by the hummer driver, but the picture is much bigger than those two
individuals. Our society has an altogether de-moralized stance towards the untold death
22
Id.
12
and suffering that will happen if the present generation does not rein in its carbon
excesses. The moral implications of our everyday actions scream out to the future, but
they are silenced by the present.
A framework for climate action must call out to something larger than ourselves,
something that connects us to each other and to the generations that follow us. A trust
approach is unique, because it not only draws upon ancient legal doctrine, but it harnesses
the strong, even instinctive, inclination that human beings have to hand inheritance down
to the next generation. Entire societies have defined morality through inter-generational
obligation, and families throughout all of time have built and nurtured legacy through the
generations. The concern and protection of descendant generations is a strong human
covenant that runs through cultures and families, binding the generations to one another
as they pass through life.
We draw upon that covenant when we characterize the natural endowment that
future generations are entitled to inherit. Failure to protect this vital natural inheritance
amounts to generational theft – it breaches the moral covenant. The eighth of the Ten
Commandments states: “You shall not steal.” By recognizing the atmosphere as a
priceless asset that this generation inherited, and that our children have no less right to
and need for, we may better judge ourselves and our personal carbon pollution against
this Commandment. Are we taking something rightfully owned, and needed, by them?
Are we loving parents who are nevertheless thieves against our own children?
There was once a time in this country when a moral ethic against waste prevailed
across all of America. In WWII, the country was united in an extraordinary patriotic
effort that included, at its core, a conservation ethic. During WWII, all possible resources
had to be diverted to the troops whose lives were on the line in defense of our nation.
13
Americans clearly understood that human life and welfare hinged on their daily
conservation practices. You surely wouldn’t have seen SUVs roaring down the streets of
America when people were trying to conserve gas for the troops. Any waste on the home
front was a direct affront to the families that had sent their sons into war. There was a
high community standard backing the tremendous individual sacrifices and conservation
measures needed for the war effort.
Today we have to make the same connection between our lifestyles, our waste,
and the welfare of our sons and daughters. We must realign our consumption choices
into needs versus wants, and chose simplicity over extravagance, given that the real
hidden subsidy of today’s consumptive lifestyle is human death and suffering tomorrow.
III.
The Climate Victory Speakers
How do we incorporate this climate responsibility into our own lives? First, we
need to mobilize this nation. As Reverend Fred Small has said, “Changing a light bulb is
good. Changing a member of Congress is better.”23 There are many people in this
country – perhaps the majority – who are concerned about global warming but are taking
no action at all to reduce their own carbon or to hold their leaders accountable. They are
not deniers. They are simply distracted. When these citizens are confronted with the
truth of what is happening, they will feel a moral imperative to act, and they will force
their leaders to act. This is a psychological leap forward happening all over the world at
once. But it doesn’t happen without catalysts.
The greatest mobilization this country has ever known occurred in WWII. People
did not just sit by. They took initiative. They used whatever talent they had to throw
themselves into the wartime effort. Households made do with the bare minimum. But
23
Small, supra note 19, at 17.
14
this great mobilization would not have happened without the Victory Speakers, as they
were called. Speakers Bureaus formed in cities across the country, drawing 100,000
volunteers. Their purpose was to explain the nature of the threat, the need for citizen
support, and to show citizens how they could conserve resources. Victory Speakers
would give five-minute speeches at theatres, clubs, town halls, schools -- any forum they
could find. These Victory Speakers were not chosen for their outstanding oratory skills,
but rather were the “trusted and familiar voices” in the community -- the banker,
carpenter, mother, and school teacher. My mother and grandmother were both Victory
Speakers in Oregon.
Today, we need Victory Speakers for climate crisis -- ordinary people who can
convey the urgency of carbon reduction, deliver the trust framework of responsibility,
teach people how to conserve, and inspire extraordinary action. The Climate Victory
Speakers that I know wake up in the middle of the night and spend their next day
speaking out, writing letters, emailing legislators, calling reporters, and gathering
neighbors --- they use any forum they can find to convey the urgency of planetary
heating. There are now scores of people across the planet who are devoting their lives,
jobs, and families to this, and the numbers grow every day as climate tragedies unfold
through fires, floods, droughts and food shortages. Climate Victory speakers, like the
WWII victory speakers, invoke a stirring patriotism -- but this time, it is a planetary
patriotism to mount a world-wide atmospheric defense effort.
Let me tell you about some young Victory Speakers I know. I mentioned speaking
to schools in McCall, Idaho last year. Not long ago, McCall was a place where people
didn’t ever talk about global warming. They didn’t have time to deal with it. They were
either working too hard, or playing too hard. People sped around in SUVs, snowmobiles,
15
powerboats and jet skis. Recall that I had told one high school class, “The whole planet
rests on McCall, Idaho taking its responsibility for carbon pollution – and on everyone
else thinking the same way.” After I left that day, two students named Peter and Sam
organized the class to take action. A month later, the class gave a community
presentation on global warming and how it would affect their future. They packed the
high school gymnasium. There were city officials, school officials, parents and
grandparents, coaches, nurses, doctors, accountants, architects – the town turned out in
mass. The event began with an eight year old, Claire, who had written a letter addressed
to the People of McCall, Idaho:
Dear People of McCall,
I’m really disappointed not only in what America is doing but . . . what the whole
world is doing. Coral reefs are dying, forests are becoming farms, ice bergs are melting
into the ocean. That is only the start. . . All the world is getting in trouble. . . . We can
make a difference though. We can all make a difference if we just spend time with family
and friends talking over what we can do and proceed to do what we talk about doing.
There was silence after she spoke. And there were tears. The citizens of McCall
realized, this is real. But now there’s no stopping that town and the changes they will
make. They are creating local food systems, exploring alternative energy, starting local
transportation initiatives, and involving hundreds of community people. Peter, Sam, and
Claire were Victory Speakers. They placed responsibility for carbon pollution squarely
on McCall, Idaho -- and they are taking a leap of faith that towns across the world will
step up in just the same way.
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So what can you do? Two things. First, I ask you all become Climate Victory
Speakers. Climate Victory Speakers must engage government to focus immediately on
this planetary emergency. In WWII, government moved fast to mobilize the country. Our
government is moving at a snail’s pace, putting all Americans and their children and
descendants at risk. May Roosevelt’s words echo through the voices of today’s Climate
Victory Speakers: “Let no man say it cannot be done . . . . Speed will save lives; speed
will save this Nation which is in peril; speed will save . . . our civilization . . . slowness
has never been an American characteristic.”24
Climate Victory Speakers must engage as many decision-makers as possible, at
every level, from the school boards, to the state legislature, to the White House. As
citizen beneficiaries of this great atmospheric trust, require your public servants and
politicians to take responsibility for arresting the growth of carbon emissions within the
next year. Demand also that government begin the huge task of making our communities
more resilient to the damage that is inevitable from the climate heating that we have
already set in motion. Scientists say that, due to the carbon pollution we’ve already
dumped into the atmosphere, we have another 2.6 degrees F. of warming in the system
that is irrevocable. We can’t call it back. All of the damage we’ve seen from climate so
far has resulted from only 1 degree F. heating. Living in this greenhouse of our own
making may become more difficult than any of us can imagine as we sit here today.
There is tremendous work to be done across society to restructure and re-localize
society to create local food systems, carbon free public transportation, local
manufacturing capacity for essential tools and clothing, and to provide necessary stores
24
President
Roosevelt,
1942
State
of
the
Union
Address,
http://janda.org/politxts/state%20of%20union%20addresses/1934-1945%20Roosevelt/FDR42.html.
17
of medicines. Agencies at all levels, within all departments, must be involved. Public
officials have to recognize that we are entering a new world of planetary heating. They
need to start using our tax dollars in a much different way, to favor bike paths over
freeway expansions, school gardens over artificial turf fields, edible landscapes over
manicured parks. This will not happen without citizen catalysts like you.
But Climate Victory Speakers also have to reach beyond government, to their
own families, schools, and neighborhoods, to wake people up to climate crisis. We have
to call out the urgency while at the same time voicing, from the heart, a sacred trust
covenant to protect our children’s’ rightful natural inheritance. I think you will find that
this trust covenant rings in the heart of all Humanity. These trust morals can be spoken
as the last words from a grandmother to her grandchildren, anywhere in the world.
In your mission as a Climate Victory Speaker, you will find that many people are
mentally wandering, and wondering. They sense we are entering a new world, but they
haven’t found their role in it. If you show them the urgency of the climate tipping point,
the lethal consequences of runaway heating to their children, the likelihood of
demolished civilizations from sea level rise, the endless drought, raging infernos, crop
failures, and migration of millions or billions of human environmental refugees that will
result from our carbon pollution, they will realize -- yes they will realize – that it is they
who are standing on the bank of that river watching a child below struggle in the swirling
waters. If you just show them the emergency, they will find their calling.
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IV.
The Great Family Turning
The second thing I am asking you to do is to live tomorrow in a much different
way than you did today. I am asking you to be the living expression of the trust covenant
to protect our common natural Endowment, and to raise your children and grandchildren
within that covenant. This can’t be done merely by changing a few light bulbs, or riding
the bus more often, or recycling more. It means defining, for yourself, a new life way,
and through your exuberance and delight and confidence over that life way, inspire others
to follow a similar path. For parents in the congregation, I’m asking you to be part of a
Great Family Turning.25
Families all over the world are turning to a new way of life as defined by relocalization.26 It’s a grassroots movement fueled not by petroleum, but by sheer human
imagination and innovation, from the family up through the neighborhood, and spreading
through whole towns. Re-localization addresses the converging threats we face – not just
climate crisis, but also peak oil and economic collapse – and builds self-sufficiency by
drawing upon neighbors and by building community. It is expressed through school
gardens, Victory Gardens, farmer’s markets, local dairies, bicycle taxis, backyard
chickens, urban homesteads, renewable energy projects, garage bulk food storage, and
25
See DAVID C. KORTEN, THE GREAT TURNING: FROM EMPIRE TO EARTH COMMUNITY (2008), described at
http://thegreatturning.net/book-great-turning-empire-earth-community (“A convergence of climate change,
peak oil, and the financial instability inherent in an unbalanced global trading system will bring an
unraveling of the corporate-led global economy and a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.
We cannot avoid the unraveling. We can, however, turn a potentially terminal crisis into an epic
opportunity to bring forth a new era of Earth Community grounded in the life-affirming cultural values
shared by most all the world’s people. . . . “).
The definitive resource is ROB HOPKINS, THE TRANSITION HANDBOOK: FROM OIL DEPENDENCY TO LOCAL
RESILIENCE.
26
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neighborhood emergency networks. Eugene, Oregon is a Transition Town, as we call it –
a town moving from the industrialized paradigm to a new paradigm of local resilience.
The backbone of this movement is the family. I can speak personally to this way
of life, because my husband and I are fully engaged in it with our three young boys. But
it wasn’t always so. Five years ago, I was a newbie soccer mom. I enrolled my little
boys in soccer and started hauling them around town to practices and games. Along the
soccer field at the appointed time was a regular line-up of huge, gas-guzzling SUVs and
mini-vans. After the children spilled out onto the field, the parents would idle on the
sidelines sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups, or drinking Pepsi from plastic bottles.
They would talk about their family trips to Costa Rica, or Mexico, or Europe, or
Disneyland. They would rave about the new soccer equipment they had purchased and
share their exploits at the mall. At half time, the parents would dole out dozens of plastic
juice bottles to the little soccer players. They would dispense Albertson cookies from
plastic boxes and slices of cake from thick plastic domes, slap the goodies on paper
plates, and stuff plastic forks into little reaching hands. Within five minutes, the trash
cans exploded with paper, plastic and Styrofoam. No one seemed to give any thought to
the waste. This was the soccer life. Practices three times a week, two games on the
weekend, and heaps upon heaps of trash.
At this same time I was learning how to be a dutiful soccer mom, I was doing
climate research for my job. The conclusions I was reading from the scientific
community turned my reality upside down. I came to a dreadful realization that my
children’s future survival was threatened by exactly the carbon-intense parenting culture
that I, as a loving mother, was engaged in. But oddly enough, for a couple of months, I
20
kept on being that newbie soccer mom, because I really hadn’t thought of any other way
to raise our kids. Seemed like everyone was hauling their kids to soccer games around
town and that’s what good parenting was all about.
There came a point, however, when I could no longer look my children in the
eyes with out thinking about climate crisis and the tipping point and my role in it all.
Yes, there were benefits to soccer, but really, in light of the world ahead, is soccer the
skill that our kids need most? And how do we reconcile the enormous carbon pollution
in today’s parenting? How can we love our children and yet contribute to the demise of
their world? That’s not love. That’s denial.
We gave up the soccer life.
At about this time, Mayor Kitty Piercy made a carbon challenge to the residents
of Eugene in which she asked them to do two new things a month to reduce carbon. We
made this a family challenge. At first we did things like ride the bus, or have a no-drive
day once a week. The next month we’d come up with two new things, and the next
month two more things. Within a year, our front lawn had become a mini-orchard and
vegetable garden, there was bulk food stored in our garage, we were riding our bicycles
nearly everywhere, we had eliminated almost all food packaging, nearly all of our fruits
and vegetables came from local sources, we made our own bread and chicken soup and
granola bars every week, we rarely entered a grocery store, we raised chickens and built a
coop, we gave up plastic and air travel, we spent our summers berry picking and
backpacking, and we spent the long autumn days canning, freezing, and drying the
harvest we had gleaned from our own garden and local farms. Our family enterprise
21
became completely devoted to self-sufficiency, home food production, and skillsbuilding in farming, food preservation, wild plant identification, and the like.
These days, our kids dash home from school eager to get started on planting, or
raising seedlings, or canning tomatoes, or drying pears. They hop on their bicycles and
ride through the neighborhood, giving away extra lettuce, tomatoes and berries from our
garden. Their little acts of sharing build community. Neighbors drop in with gifts for our
kids – like an old tub to wash carrots in, a blueberry bush, a jar of pie filling, pumpkin
seeds, and a recipe for granola bars. My children have become self-appointed
ambassadors for this urban homestead lifestyle by talking about it to our neighbors and
their friends, and using it as the subject for school writing assignments and projects. Our
family dinner conversation is often filled with new insights into raising vegetables or
canning foods, or the latest ways to keep slugs out of the spinach. We also have
discussions about how fast the world is changing, and how we will prepare for it,
embrace it, and learn new ways -- or old ways. Days upon days go by without using the
car, and we really don’t even notice it because we are so occupied at home, working side
by side to produce our own food -- all of which is part of a family journey towards more
self-sufficiency, carbon reduction, and sustainability.
At some point along the way, I noticed that Mayor Kitty Piercy’s carbon
challenge had evolved into a new – and infinitely richer – way of life for us. The
challenge of two carbon-reducing initiatives a month had grown into a family enterprise,
a source of joy and pride, a learning experience, a family identity, and a well-spring of
self-esteem and responsibility for our children. Perhaps most important, it had become a
shared statement of purpose, a moral fabric for family life – a daily expression of the trust
22
covenant shared with our children. My husband often comes in from the garden and
says, “It’s a wonderful life.” And I have to agree. I invite you to embrace this new world
ahead -- with courage, passion, and a sense of adventure -- and join in the Great Family
Turning.
V.
The Victory Congregations
And finally, I ask your church community to become a Victory Congregation.
Churches are, I think, the most suitable places for these ideas to flourish. Reverend Pat
Watkins has written: “Global warming can be seen through the lens of science and
politics, which is fine. But it can also be seen through the lens of faith. Faith will move
us like nothing else can.”27 Churches are sanctuaries in which humans explore ethics and
morals in the sacred context. You lend support to people going through frightening
times, you summon faith in uncertain times, and you develop new strategies for everyday living that enrich, rather than deplete, your spiritual reservoirs. You are supremely
organized. If this calling begins in your church, as the first Victory Congregation, its
hopeful voice could sing in Victory Congregations across this state, and across this
nation. The trust covenant among generations can be preached from pulpits all across
this precious Earth.
VI.
Claiming Our Moment
The world today needs can-do people – millions of them -- to activate
government, communities, and neighborhoods. We have too many can’t-do people -passive bystanders to climate crisis. The can-do people will save this planet, and they
27
Rev. Pat Watkins, Building Creation on a Firm Foundation, LOVE GOD, HEAL EARTH 26 (2009).
23
will tell their grandchildren how they answered a generational call. There are can-do
people in every corner of the globe, and there are can-do people in every seat in this
church. Whatever your position is in life, this is the time to do something, anything. Just
don’t do nothing. It is true that you alone can’t save the world, but the world can’t be
saved without you.
Somehow fate has delivered all of us into this pivotal moment on Earth. We did
not live 100 years ago, when it was too early to even imagine the collapse upon us, and
we will not be here 100 years from now, when it will be too late to save what we still can.
We can only claim our moment. In our moment, let us live and defend that sacred trust
covenant -- to protect our precious atmosphere as part of the Earth Endowment we must
hand down to our children, for their survival.
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